CYB - Gioco di ruolo in un lontano futuro (1998)

CYB - Gioco di ruolo in un lontano futuro

Summary courtesy of Andrea Angiolino, used with permission.

Written with an ecologist spirit by the same team of authors that already published "I Cavalieri del Tempio", the short role-playing game "CYB" propose a post-apocalyptic seting in a world conquered by plants. Players don't know exactly who they are: their characters wake up after a centenary sleep in an underground room. Actually they are cyborgs: they do not know their partly mechanical origin and the powers of their enhanced body, but they discover it all quite soon.

The contents of the bokltet are the same that appeared in the magazine Kappa in January 1991: "A short universal history of the XXVI century", the rules, the character sheet and two adventures.

"CYB" has been written as an introductory RPG to be published in the Italian monthly computer games magazine Kappa. Polyhedral dice were rare in Italy at that time, so the system uses a deck of poker playing cards instead. The four attrubutes of each character are hearts (feelings and capacity of suscitate symphaty, being able to sustain psychological stress), diamonds (willpower, self-control), spades (strenght, stamina) and clubs (dexterity, agility, body control). Attributes are determined taking a random card from a reduced deck with all the cards ranging from 1 to 6.

With the same system, four skills are determined. Skills also range from a value of 1 to a value of 6. The four skills of each character are hearts (communication, creativity, arts, language, psychology), diamonds (organization, leadership, logic), clubs (natural sciences) and spades (technology and applied sciences).

Cyber parts of each character are randomly determined by the game master (the "Mastercyb"), but not revealed until the end of the first adventure.

When the Mastercyb judges that an action requires a test, he also deciudes which one is the more relevant attribute. An easy test is considered successful if the player picks up a card of the same value of the attribute or less; for a difficult test it must be of the same colour of the characteristic/skill (for example, black); for a very difficult test it must be of the same suit as well. Court cards have a value of zero. The red joker is the perfect success, the black one the total failure.

"Challenges" between two characters are solved picking a card each and adding the value of the involved attribute/skill. If the picked card is of the same suit of the attribute r skill, its value is doubled.

Experience is also based on playing cards, that are picked up randomly at the end of each adventure. They are the equivalent of instructions for the mechanical parts of the characters' bodies: they can be assembled by the players to program them, gaining extra skills and new powers. Each card value is a different kind of instruction, while each suit matches a different part of the body.

The first of the two adventures is the introductory "Il risveglio" ("The Reawakening"): the characters wake up in a military base in a desert with memories of the XXIV century, and they have to face the intelligent plants that now rule the world. The second one is a sequel, "L'albero della vita" ("The Tree of Life"): characters can become aware that they are in the military base "Louis Blériot" at Forrest Lake, southern Australia, and that it is the 27th of June 2521. They will then have to face some more plants and several robots, one of which is "the Alchemist". Besides, they can locate a faint radio broadcast coming from 360 km south-west, with a fragment of Dylan's "Blowin' in the wind" repeated at regular intervals. This can be the start of the first adventure invented by the Mastercyb...